


Literary

by pringlesaremydivision



Category: Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-25
Updated: 2004-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pringlesaremydivision/pseuds/pringlesaremydivision
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richie tried, once, to write a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Literary

**Author's Note:**

> Just moving some stuff over from Livejournal.

Richie tried, once, to write a story, one like those that Eli was always coming up with. He snuck into Margot's room while she was away - up on the roof, and Richie had always wondered what she did up there but had never thought to ask because it didn't seem his business, somehow - and used her typewriter, fingers bending awkwardly over the keys.  
  
It took him roughly three hours to write, ran exactly two pages, and he burned it when he was finished, not because he didn't like it but because he didn't want anyone else to read it.  
  
  
He put the ashes in a little wooden box with 'Richie' stenciled on the top in blue letters, a little wooden box that Margot had given to him for his tenth birthday, and he gave it to Eli, on the steps of his building with the snow swirling down around them. Their hands, frostbite-red and freezing, brushed for a fraction of a second when Richie handed him the box, and Richie felt a quiet warmth spread from his fingertips throughout his body. Eli rubbed his thumb absently over the letters on the wood and Richie pushed his hair behind his ears and watched the snow collect in the brim of Eli's hat.  
  
Eli didn't ask what it was, and Richie didn't tell him, but it didn't matter because when Eli opened the box and pressed his finger into the grey-black ashes and then pressed his lips to Richie's, swift and fleeting, Richie felt the meaning had been conveyed well enough.  
  
And then over Eli's shoulder he caught sight of Margot on the roof, her coat wrapped tight around her and her hair obscuring half of her face, and the warmth left his body as suddenly as it had appeared. He told Eli he had no idea what he was doing, which hadn't been true a minute before, and and he whispered something about mistakes and apologies and left Eli standing on the steps, one hand curled around the railing, staring at the open box and then up at the roof with an expression on his face that Richie didn't want to think about.  
  
  
Eli never asked what happened, and Richie never told him, never told anyone. He left the stories to Eli after that, and after he went away years later Eli used the box as a paperweight to hold down the ever-increasing pile of letters and telegrams and postcards that said simultaneously so much less and so much more than a kiss and a wordless pile of ashes did.


End file.
